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Approaches to Monumental Landscapes of the Ancient Maya showcases interpretations and perspectives of landscape importance in the central Maya lowlands, Belize, and the northern and central Maya highlands with studies spanning over 10,000 years of human occupation in the region. Taking their cues from a robust scholarship on landscape archaeology, urban planning, political history, and settlement pattern studies in Maya research, the authors in this volume explore conceptions of monumentality and landscapes that are the products of long-term research and varied research agendas, falling into three broad conceptual categories: natural and built landscapes, political and economic landscapes, and ritual and sacred landscapes. The chapters explore the concept of monumentality in novel ways and approach the idea of landscape as not just the sum total of how a settlement’s local environs were plied and manipulated to conform to the Maya’s deep-seated and normative notions of sacred geography but also take note of how the lowland Maya actively constructed landscapes of power, meaning, and exchange, which rendered their social worlds imbricated, interdependent, and complex. Though varied in their approaches, the authors are all supported by the Alphawood Foundation, and this volume is a testament to the impact philanthropy can have on scientific research.

Archaeological artifacts have become a traded commodity in large part because the global reach of Western society allows easy access to the world's archaeological heritage. Acquired by the world's leading museums and private collectors, antiquities have been removed from archaeological sites, monuments, or cultural institutions and illegally traded. This book investigates the ways that commodifying artifacts fuels the destruction of archaeological heritage and considers what can be done to protect it. Despite growing national and international legislation to protect cultural heritage, increasing numbers of archaeological sites—among them, war-torn Afghanistan and Iraq—are subject to pillage as the monetary value of artifacts rises. Offering examinations of archaeological site looting, the antiquities trade, the ruin of cultural heritage resources, and the international efforts to combat their destruction, the chapters argue that the antiquities market impacts cultural heritage around the world and is a burgeoning global crisis.

The histories of many human societies over the last ten millennia have been characterized by increasing social complexity and economic inequality. This phenomenon ranks among the intellectually pressing anthropological questions about human history that also holds great relevance to help understand modern social challenges. Drawing upon diverse studies of human remains from ancient Egypt, Greece, China, and the Americas, this volume is the first to bring together physical anthropologists, archaeologists, and economists to better understand the wide range of effects of social complexity upon human biology in the past. The authors encounter many different kinds of entanglements between sociopolitical organization, economic variation, and inequality. This book shows how bioarchaeology provides a key voice to help to better understand and navigate contemporary issues of social complexity and inequality in terms of the forces and factors that impact human biology and health. This book contribute greater perspective toward understanding the present day and perhaps point toward some potential direction of the near-term human future.

In recent years, interest in the lives of children in antiquity has flourished, creating many exciting new research opportunities for bioarchaeologists. In this book, the exploration of children’s lives in the past is being addressed on multiple levels and draws from many sub-disciplines. These multi-disciplinary approaches include detailed analyses of growth and ontogeny interpreted through differing biocultural perspectives, complex reconstructions of childhood health and well-being, and rich contextual investigations of social aging and changing identity throughout childhood and adolescence. All of these research streams contribute substantially to our understanding of childhood in the past, but there is often a disconnect between biological and social spheres of research. A central theme of this volume is that future work on the lives of children in antiquity should be built on a strong foundation of biocultural research that draws from, and more successfully integrates, multiple sub-disciplines, including skeletal biology and physiology, archaeology, and socio-cultural anthropology. This deepening of biocultural approaches is essential if we are to study the lives of children in ways that better reflect the complexity of the juvenile period. The end goal is to highlight how diverse research interests can be brought together to enrich our understanding of childhood in the past and particularly to better understand childhood as a dynamic, embodied experience (“lived through” both physically and socially).

Even as places and objects that have particular cultural significance are increasingly valued in our global world, powerful forces threaten them with destruction. This book discusses the efforts of a broad range of specialists devoted to safeguarding our cultural heritage. The book brings together an international group of scholars, featuring archaeologists, anthropologists, development specialists, and others engaged in the study, management, protection, and interpretation of places and objects that represent histories, traditions, and cultural identities. From international law to artifact preservation to site interpretation, there is a wide variety of approaches to the management of our cultural heritage. Combining the voices of scholars and practitioners, the book provides a diversity of voices and perspectives from people steeped in the issues that directly affect the future or the past.

These fifteen chapters explore the ways in which recent developments in imaging, image analysis, and image display and diffusion can be applied to objects of material culture in order to enhance historians' understanding of the period from which the objects came (in this case, the remote past). In interpreting artefacts, the historian acts out a perceptual-cognitive task of transforming often noisy and impoverished signals into semantically rich symbols that have to be set within a cultural and historical context. Engineering scientists, equipped with a range of sophisticated techniques, equipment and highly specialised knowledge, are not always as aware as they might be of the range and the exact nature of problems faced by historians in interpreting objects of material culture. By providing the opportunity for scholars from these communities to explain to each other what they are doing and how, the chapters explore the ways in which the scientific contributors and the historians are thinking about subjectivity of interpretation, visual cognition, and the need to improve methods of presenting evidence so as to feed directly back into their own scientific thinking and to encourage genuine innovation in their approach to developing methods of image-enhancement and interpretation of objects. A significant further dimension is the improvement of techniques of providing high quality images of important and valuable collections of original artefacts to scholars who cannot always study the originals directly. Another important development discussed here is the fact that such imaging techniques now offer the researcher valuable insurance against the processes of deterioration to which such artefacts are inevitably subject. Seven of the chapters are scientific and technical, while the other eight have an archaeological or historical focus.

This book is a critical survey of the discipline of Islamic archaeology and of the ways in which archaeology can contribute to our understanding of the Islamic past between the seventh and the early twentieth centuries. The book proposes a definition of Islamic archaeology as the examination of the material record of populations (Muslim and non-Muslim) living under the rule of Muslim elites. The central part of the book is arranged thematically and makes use of case studies from the Middle East, Central Asia, North Africa, East Africa, and the Iberian Peninsula to explore topics including: urbanism, palatial culture, rural settlement, agricultural practices, hydraulic engineering, mosque construction and evolution, death and burial, manufacturing and technology, trade, and pilgrimage. The case studies are drawn from all phases of Islamic history. There are also three chronologically defined chapters dealing with: the transition from late antiquity to early Islam; the evidence for innovations in the archaeological record of early Islam; and the period from the fifteenth to the early twentieth centuries. The book concludes that Islamic archaeologist need to find effective ways of communicating their results to non-specialists, and that there needs to be further dialogue between archaeologists and other scholars of past Islamic societies. This dialogue should encompass both the framing of research projects and the interpretation of results, and has the potential to offer a more nuanced reading of the history and cultures of Islam.

What are mundane or everyday matters of the ancient and historical past? Why are these mundane matters important to archaeology? Southeastern archaeologists too often talk to each other in a language of types and time periods. This results in people, and their actions and behaviors, becoming lost in the welter of artifacts, data, and jargon. Centering the archaeological discussion on the everyday affords a vantage point from which archaeologists can think about the artifacts and conceptions of the past in new ways. Indeed, although the contributors to the volume are united under a common theme, the theme evoked varied approaches to the everyday. This variety demonstrates the many ways that thinking about the everyday can be incorporated into the reader’s specific archaeology. The vantage of everyday also provides a relevance to non-archaeologists, everyday people, if you will. It can thus further education and stewardship and enliven interest in the discipline. Archaeologists will find inspiration in how to bring the everyday to their work and rethink their own everyday actions in terms of conducting archaeology and engaging the public. Additionally, although not written specifically for the non-archaeological audience, the volume serves as an engaging entry into archaeological thinking through exploration of various times and topics.

Bioarchaeology and forensic anthropology offer unique perspectives on studies of mass violence and present opportunities to interpret human skeletal remains in a broader cultural context. Massacres and other forms of large-scale violence have been documented in many different ancient and modern contexts. Moving the analysis from the victims to the broader political and cultural context necessitates using social theories about the nature of mass violence. Massacres can be seen as a process, that is, as the unfolding of nonrandom patterns or chains of events that precede the events and continue long after. Mass violence has a cultural logic of its own that is shaped by social and historical dynamics. Massacres can have varying aims, including subjugation or total eradication of a group based on status, ethnicity, or religion. The goal of this edited volume is to present case studies that integrate the evidence from human remains within the broader cultural and historical contexts through the utilization of social theory to provide a framework for interpretation. This volume highlights case studies of massacres across time and space that stress innovative theoretical models that help make sense of this unique form of violence. The primary focus will be on how massacres are used as a strategy of violence across time and cultural/geopolitical landscapes.

Do skeletal indicators used to reconstruct past people’s activity patterns actually reflect biological differences? This book reviews the literature on the most commonly utilized activity pattern indicators in bioarchaeology to answer this genes versus environment question. Chapter 2, for example, focuses on cross-sectional geometries, which have been used to look at mobility, and asks whether these measures of bone may also be influenced by climate-driven body shape adaptions. Chapters 3 and 4 look at entheseal changes, which are locations of muscle attachments, and osteoarthritis, which is also known as degenerative joint disease, to determine whether these features can be applied by bioarchaeologists to reconstruct activity patterns, especially when one considers that the best predictors for these features is age. Stress fractures (such as spondylolysis), which are covered in chapter 5, and activity indicator facets (such as kneeling facets), which are discussed in chapter 6, are more likely related to anatomical variation and other hereditary factors than activities previously linked to these skeletal features. After looking at all the evidence, which comes from research by bioarchaeologists, medical and sports studies, experimental animal research, genetic twin studies, and occupational studies on the living and the deceased, it appears that not all skeletal activity indicators will prove fruitful when reconstructing past people’s activity patterns.

This book brings together archaeologists specializing in Old and New World colonialism—both ancient and modern—to explore the major issues that cross cut their respective areas of study. In particular, contributors investigate colonial consequences by engaging in dialogue with one another over consumption practices, diaspora and movement, representations of time, and archaeology’s connection to descendant communities in contemporary practice and interpretation. Unique to this collection of essays, all contributors consider the implications of their respective studies and comparisons with other forms of colonialism in terms of the past, present, and future, especially with respect to heritage and memory. All chapters recognize the delicate balance that archaeologies of colonialism must maintain while coming to grips with the violent and disruptive nature of colonialism along with the creative and resilient reactions to colonialism among various groups enmeshed therein. The volume concludes with two discussion chapters that consider the implications of these examples of comparative colonialism for indigenous archaeology and the study of the modern world.

Trends and Traditions in Southeastern Zooarchaeology offers a synthesis of zooarchaeology's history as an integral part of southeastern archaeology alongside a presentation of contemporary cases that employ current methods, analyses, and research questions that have positioned southeastern zooarchaeology on the cutting-edge of the field. On both theoretical and analytical levels this volume explores the roles played by animals in economic, social, and ideological realms of the Southeastern Indians, as well as their use as proxies in enabling us to better understand the natural and created worlds of the past. A secondary intention of the volume is to highlight the broad educational and employment arena of southeastern zooarchaeologists. To this end, volume contributors are established professionals in academia, public service, and the private sector. The overarching goals of this volume are to offer a historical perspective on the development of research themes and methodological rigor within southeastern zooarchaeology and to demonstrate the current state of research using zooarchaeological remains via case studies.

During the New Kingdom (c. 1570–1070 bce), the Valley of the Kings was the burial place of Egypt's pharaohs, including such powerful and famous rulers as Amenhotep III, Rameses II, and Tutankhamen. They were buried here in large and beautifully decorated tombs that have become among the country's most visited archaeological sites. The tourists contribute millions of badly needed dollars to Egypt's economy. But because of inadequate planning, these same visitors are destroying the very tombs they come to see. Crowding, pollution, changes in the tombs’ air quality, ever-growing tourist infrastructure—all pose serious threats to the Valley's survival. This volume, the result of twenty-five years of work by the Theban Mapping Project at the American University in Cairo, traces the history of the Valley of the Kings and offers specific proposals to manage the site and protect its fragile contents. At the same time, it recognizes the need to provide a positive experience for the thousands of visitors who flock here daily. This is the first major management plan developed for any Egyptian archaeological site, and as its proposals are implemented, they offer a replicable model for archaeologists, conservators, and site managers throughout Egypt and the region. Published in both English and Arabic editions and supported by the World Monuments Fund, this critical study will help to ensure the survival of Egypt's patrimony in a manner compatible with the country's heavy reliance on tourism income.